The collection

The Treger/Saint Silvestre Collection integrates more than a 1000 works of Art Brut, Singular Art and Contemporary Art. This specific nature turns it unique at the Iberian Peninsula. The Collection is one of the richest private collections in the world and englobes the classic Art Brut authors, such as Adolf Wölfli, Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern, Giovanni Battista Podestà and Oskar Voll, as well as more recent discoveries, like Ezekiel Messou, Guo Fengyi, Giovanni Galli, Miroslav Tichý and Eugene Von Bruenchenhein.

Since 2014 the Collection has been open to public at Núcleo de Arte da Oliva in the city of São João da Madeira in Portugal. In 2017 the Collection has received the “Collector” award by APOM – Portuguese Association of Museology.

John Ricardo Cunningham

Peru, 1918 – 1991

Cunningham was born in Cerro Azul in Southern Peru. His father was Scottish and managed a British sugar trading company. After the death of his mother, Ricardo and three of his siblings were sent to Lima to live with their aunt. Both Ricardo and his brother attended a prestigious secondary school, where he first demonstrated his interest in drawing. Shortly after turning nineteen, Cunningham got depressed and was admitted to the Victor-Larco Herrera Hospital. There he became a patient of the well-known psychiatrist and psychanalyst Honorio Delgado. He started painting his cartoonesque characters depicted in profile view that narrated stories of Europe and the Americas and served as sharp comments on class division. The colors of his works were vivid and most often selected from the primary color palette.